


damn permanent revery

by brookethenerd



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Drift Bond, Drift Compatibility, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21983164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brookethenerd/pseuds/brookethenerd
Summary: There are no secrets in the Drift. When Steve and the reader test their drift compatibility, it dredges years of unspoken feelings to the surface
Relationships: Steve Harrington/Reader, Steve Harrington/You
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	damn permanent revery

Drift compatibility was never a concern. 

Dragged from one of the many overflowing orphanages - the orphanages were terrible, but children wandering kaiju prone streets was worse - at eight years old and plopped onto the bunk below a then nine Steve Harrington, your years together were enough of a qualifier. Add in the fact that the last ten had been spent training together, and sprinkle in a dash of near-death experience, and you’ve got the perfect co-pilot equation. 

“Nervous?” Steve asked, swinging his top half over the edge of his bunk, grinning at you upside down, hair hanging toward the floor. You tugged a hoodie over your tank top and slipped your feet into sneakers, arching a brow at him. 

“Not even a little bit.”

“Liar.”

“Self-projection, perhaps?”

Steve’s head disappeared, and he slid down and off the bed, dropping to the floor in front of you and tugging his sneakers toward him. He tucked his foot into one and met your gaze. 

“It’s not like there’s anyone else. You and Robin, maybe, but we all know she and Nancy have it in the bag. Don’t even get me started on Mike and Will-” he cut himself off at the pointed look on your face. 

“Maybe just a hint of self-projection.” 

You smiled and stretched out a hand brush the stray hairs off his forehead, a gesture borne of years upon years sleeping below him, tending his wounds, sharing meals together, bleeding, and fighting together. You knew him better than you knew yourself; it felt like it had always been that way. 

“We’ve got this,” you said. Steve’s gaze followed your hand as it left his forehead and fell to your gaze, hesitating a moment too long before he met your eyes. He was all confidence, then, lips quirking up in that signature grin. 

“A kaiju’s worst nightmare,” he said, parroting words you’d told him years ago, when he first pondered who he’d co-pilot with. You told him immediately it was you; together, you could scare a kaiju to death. The joke had followed you for years, and now it made you smile. 

“A heart attack in a jaeger,” you said. A knock sounded on the dorm door, and the others hopped up and headed for it. 

“Ready?” You asked, getting to your feet. You held out a hand, and Steve took it. 

“Ready.” 

* * *

Hopper stood at the edge of the mat with his arms crossed, mouth turned down in that ever-present frown of his. 

“Harrington, Y/N, you’re up,” he said. Nancy and Robin had just cleared the mat, dripping with sweat after three rounds of ties. It was clear from Hopper’s expression he’d decided within the first five seconds of the fight, but he let them carry on. 

You tugged off your jacket and set your shoes aside, Steve tucking his beside them, and you crossed to the wall covered in every conceivable weapon. You both went for the staff; you were proficient in everything on the wall, but both preferred the staff. You spent most of your time in the training room with them, so much so that you’d surpassed the others years ago, only able to keep up with each other. 

You stood opposite Steve on the mat, both in starting stances. Steve waggled his brows, back turned to Hopper, and you narrowed your eyes ever so slightly. His lips puckered; he’d gotten the silent fuck you. 

“On my mark,” Hopper said, and you tightened your grip on the staff. “3, 2, 1…mark.” 

Steve attacked first, as he always did, and you met him in the center of the mat, blocking his swing. He swung down, you raised the staff to meet him; you swung at his side, he ducked and blocked it. It was more of a dance than a fight, giving an inch here and an inch there, never landing fatal hits, never pushing past the barriers of the other staff. 

Two of the youngest pilots in training, but simultaneously some of its oldest residents. Trained to fight before you hit double digits. Alone, the two of you were deadly. Together, you were impenetrable. Against each other, you always reached an impasse. 

Hopper let the fight go on longer than he had Nancy and Robin’s, and you took a single second to breathe, Steve doing the same, glancing over at your judge. He seemed impressed by the fight, the ease with which you moved around the other. You fell into the rhythm of battle, the combat you’d become experts in. 

And when Hopper called it off, you and Steve dropped your staff, both dripping with sweat, limbs fatigued, but smiling, because you knew, because you could _feel_ it. 

* * *

Though the suits were lightweight, they still took getting used to, your center of balance shifting with the addition of the slick pseudo-metal plating. The jaeger - your jaeger - was beautiful, as beautiful as a 2500 ton aggregation of metal could be. She stood six stories tall with shining red and yellow coloring, eyeshield a glimmering white beneath its honeycomb texture. 

Scarlet Striker was her name, one of the last Mark 3’s in rotation, the only one in the Los Angeles Shatterdome. Five other jaegers lived there, all Mark 4’s and 5’s, but Scarlet had drawn both you and Steve from the beginning. 

You stepped into footholds, and they closed around your feet, the gel filling your helmet and immediately spilling back out. You couldn’t see Steve on your left but heard him as he settled into place. 

“Good morning _Scarlet Striker_ ,” said Joyce Byers over the comms, “Hope everyone got enough sleep last night. If not….well, anyways, let’s get this show on the road. Pilot-to-pilot protocol in t-minus one minute.” 

You twisted so you could see Steve, who gave you a thumbs up and a supportive grin through his helmet. You stuck your tongue out at him, to which his smile only widened, and shifted back into position. 

“You two ready in there?” Joyce asked. 

“All good,” Steve replied. 

“Commencing test, standby,” the lights went wild around you, comms crackling, “Initiating neural handshake in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…”

_You stand on a beach, cold waves lapping over your feet. Your mother runs into the water and turns, holding her hand out for you. “Come on, Steve, it’s not that cold!” She calls, and you listen, and you follow her into the water, and it is that cold, but you don’t care-_

_You hit the mat in the training room with a thud, and though they’ve told you not to cry, tears prick your eyes. “Hey,” Steve says, kneeling beside you, “Don’t let them see you fall.”_

_You see yourself, head tipped back, laughing so hard you nearly choke on your dinner. You feel your stomach twist with something you don’t understand, something like longing._

_You see a sleeping figure on the top bunk of a bed, shoulders hunched beneath a blanket, and you know that you’d kill - you’d die - to protect them._

_You see rushes, images, flashes, memories, and you feel things that aren’t yours, and things that are. Things that you didn’t know existed are dredged from the depths of your conscious and thrown up like a slideshow._

_You feel the painful longing most of all, the aching that twines around every memory, every moment, like a vine, only visible now._

The images slowed, slowed, slowed until they stopped, and you were back in the cockpit. You could feel the tight metal of the footholds, but also the chafing against legs that weren’t yours, the excitement tinged a different color. 

_Like one person._

“Stable drift connection established,” came over the comms, the mechanical and tinny voice of Scarlet Striker ringing through the pit. 

“Alright, good job, kids. We’re taking you offline,” Joyce said. 

The Drift fell away, bringing with it a moment of loss, then normalcy as you returned to your - and only your - head. 

* * *

You headed out into the hallway with Steve on your heels, hands dug into the pockets of your hoodie. He jogged to catch up with you, raking a hand through his hair. 

“Are we not…are we not gonna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” You asked innocently. 

Steve came to a stop in the middle of the empty hall, touching your arm and halting you in place. You turned to him and crossed your arms against your chest, putting up a wall between you that you’d never had to before. 

“You don’t get to do that. I was in your head. You were in mine. You can’t pretend that…”

“That what?”

“We have to talk about it,” he said. 

“Is not talking about it an option?” You moved to head back down the hall toward the dorm, but Steve’s words held you in place. 

“I felt it,” he said. “And I know you did, too.”

You let out a sigh and threw your hands up with a shrug. 

“There’s no secrets in the drift, remember?”

“Yeah, I’m very much aware.”

The images flickered in your mind again, easily separated outside the Drift. Images of you, smiling, of you laughing, of you angry and sad and injured and tired. Images tinted red. 

You’d seen flickers of dreams - belonging to you both. Dreams in which you tangled together, in which your touches burned like fire, in which you crossed the line you’d sworn not to. 

A bond - a close one - is necessary between pilots. But intimacy comes at a price; intimacy can be torn to pieces with so little prompting. And then, where would you be? Broken-hearted, and without a co-pilot. 

It was risky to be in a relationship with your co-pilot, more so than being friends or family with one. The instability of love - new, untested love - was a risk too significant to take. 

“Aren’t you going to say anything? About…”

“About how you’re in love with me?” You asked, the words tumbling out in a rush. Steve flinched at the lurid confession the Drift had pulled out. “About how in love with you? No, I’m not. Because if I do…If we do…” You stopped, horror stories from your childhood returning. Tales of a married couple who fell out of alignment mid-battle, some petty old fight dredged to the surface. Stories of couples who lost themselves, lost each other, lost their jaegers, lost their lives. “I don’t want to ruin this.”

“And doing nothing doesn’t ruin it? Yeah, smart. Makes total sense,” Steve said, and you had to give him credit, because that was as true as what you’d said. 

“What are we supposed to do, then?”

“This isn’t the first time this has happened. And they don’t all end badly.”

“Some do.”

“Yeah, and the mortality rate for a Jaeger pilot is eight in ten, but we’re still here. We’re probably gonna die in one of these things, and we’ve known that since the day we got here. If I’m gonna die, it’s gonna be with you,” he said, as stubborn as always. It was one of the things you loved most about him; he was steady, unwavering, always safe to lean against. 

He closed the distance between you, a hand coming up to brush against the scar on your neck, an accident in training a few years back. His fingertips drew fire along your skin, and you ached to get closer, to be back in his head, even. 

It had never been a choice, you realized. From the moment you chose the bunk below Steve Harrington’s, your fate was solidified. Your destiny tangled with the gangly boy from the city, the one quick to anger and even quicker to humor. There had never been another option, never even been another possibility. 

“You know what I want,” he said, hands cupping your cheeks. “You saw it.” You slid your hands between his jacket, gripping the fabric of his shirt in your fists and drawing him an inch closer. 

“And I know you want it, too. I know you’re scared.”

“And you’re not?”

He grinned. “Oh, fucking terrified. Robin’s going to hold this over us until the day we die.”

A laugh bubbled up in your chest, and you shook your head, tipping your head against his chest. He dropped a kiss onto your head, and you tilted your chin up to meet his gaze. 

“Probably won’t be that long.”

Steve reacted with faux offense. 

“You kidding? We’re a heart attack in a jaeger,” he said. “The kaiju got nothing on us.” 

You leaned in at the same time, like you were still hooked together, mouths meeting in the middle. The kiss tasted of longing, of aching, and you kissed him until all that remained was the two of you, pressed together in the middle of an empty hallway, lost in the slide of tongues against teeth and smiles against lips. When you pulled apart, both breathing heavily, all you could do was smile dopily at one another, drunk on the feeling. 

He was right, and you knew it. Together, you were unstoppable. With a jaeger, the kaiju had no chance. 


End file.
